Gaze at men while leaning forward at a 45-degree angle and avoid showing excitement at all costs. That’s the first step to luring a would-be husband, according to a new Hong Kong reality TV show, Bride Wannabes—a show that has the city simultaneously outraged and addicted.

The premise is simple: a group of five women mostly in their 30s put themselves in the hands of love and life coaches to for six months, with the hopes of boosting their marriage prospects. Along the way, with a documentary film crew in tow, they go to cosmetic surgery clinics, get makeup tips, learn what length of an SMS message will keep a man tantalized and finesse their ability to keep their mouth shut.

“When you don’t speak, you look like Central, but when you speak you look like Mongkok,” one woman is told. For those not familiar with the city, Central is a sophisticated business district, whereas Mongkok is a dense, chaotic neighborhood on the other side of the harbor.

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Academics and scholars are up in arms over how the drama endorses some stultifying ideas about femininity. A Facebook page, “Say no to Bride Wannabes,” has already generated well over 2,300 “likes” since it was created a week ago. Still, Hong Kongers have stayed glued to their TV sets. The show claims a nightly 1.7 million viewers—suggesting that nearly 25% of the city’s population can’t get enough of Gobby, Mandy, Suki, Florence and Bonnie’s antics.

There’s a reason why the show has struck such a chord. Hong Kong’s demographics means a lot of potentially lonely female hearts: women outnumber men 10 to 9, according to 2010 UN statistics. The number of single, unmarried women in Hong Kong has been on the rise: between 1996 and 2009, the number of such women jumped by nearly 50%.

“Hong Kong is facing a great sense of crisis among both men and women,” says Susanne Choi, whose research at the Chinese University of Hong Kong focuses on marriage trends. As the status of women has risen, she says, both men and women are struggling to readjust to new norms. Even as their education and job status has improved, she says, many ideas of traditional feminine roles at home and in the workplace have stayed the same. “And if they choose not to conform to these ideas,” she says, “they face a lot of pressure.”

The show’s Chinese title, “Blossomed Women Ready for Combat,” is a play on how “盛女,” or “blossomed woman,” can also work as a pun on the phrase “剩女,” or leftover woman—a term used to describe a woman typically over age 28, often well-educated and financially independent, who hasn’t yet married. Though the term may have originated in Hong Kong, says Ms. Choi, it’s since spread to the mainland, where the number of single, college-educated, financially independent women has been on the rise. In Shanghai for example, the number of unmarried women between ages 20 and 50 has experienced what the nationalist tabloid Global Timescalls “ominous growth,” to the point that today, there are over half a million of them. (Unlike Hong Kong, the gender ratio on the mainland is heavily skewed with a glut of men: 108 men per 100 women, according to the UN.)

The 10-episode series ends tonight, however TVB, the show’s producer, has already floated the idea of a sequel—one focused on men—much to its critics’ disgust.

“After watching this show, narcissistic materialistic girls will become even more narcissistic and materialistic, and those who aren’t will be brainwashed to become that way,” wrote one critic on the “Say no to Bride Wannabes” Facebook page.

Still, perhaps the best indictment of the show comes from one of the show’s hopefuls, Mandy. She’s already quit the program, saying she’s better off finding someone by herself.

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